Drive A Hundred Miles And The Barbecue

Every Southerner, I Think, Knows People Like Bill Clinton, Maybe Not Quite As Smart And Maybe Not Quite As Liberal, But Kind Of A Glad-handing, Country-club Yuppie Southerner. The Problem Is We Don't Have Labels For Middle-class Southerners.

Every Time I Look At Atlanta I See What A Quarter Of A Million Confederate Soldiers Died To Prevent.

I Do Believe States' Rights Was A Sound Doctrine That Got Hijacked By Some Unsavory Customers For A While - Like, 150 Years Or So. I'm Professionally Obliged To Believe That Knowledge Is Better Than Ignorance, But Some Kinds Of Forgetting Are Ok With Me.

I Think There's A Suspicion In The South Of People Putting On Airs. You See It In Most Successful Southern Politicians, But You Also See It In Someone Like Richard Petty, Who May Be A Multimillionaire Stock Car Driver, But He's Also Beloved Because He Has A Nice Self-deprecatory Way About Him.

I Can See Why Many Southerners, Black Ones In Particular, Don't Like The Implication That Southernness And The Confederate Heritage Are One And The Same, Because They're Not. On The Other Hand, There Are People Who Want To Extirpate That Completely And Want Folks To Spit On The Graves Of Their Ancestors.